


and the good

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky calls Steve doll a couple times whoops, Copious amounts of hand-holding, Fluff, It references That ending so.. approach with caution, M/M, Post Infinity War, Slow Dancing, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, spoilers???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 01:12:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14461893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A fix-it in which nobody dies, Bucky is a sweetheart and saving the world has a toll on Steve.





	and the good

**Author's Note:**

> Hellooooo, so I saw infinity war the day it premiered here in England and.. I had to churn this out to deal with THAT ending. That I refuse to believe happened. Because it didn’t.

“..Steve?”

Steve turned, and Bucky was there at his side, eyes bright and enquiring. He pressed a champagne flute into Steve’s hand and gripped his bicep with the other, cold metal on bare skin. Bucky grinned up at him, squeezing the muscle. “Relax, you’re gonna freak out the tree and the blue alien.”

“Right,” Steve breathed out, forcing a smile that was entirely for Bucky’s sake and Natasha’s, who he had caught sending glances since he first entered. “Which one?”

“Which what?” Bucky questioned, features somehow a mix of both soft and stern that only he could pull off. Steve knew that face all too well. It was his mask, one of many, that he covered undeniable worry with. Mostly for Steve’s sake. He recognised it from the Depression when Steve was forced to get work, from the day of his mother’s funeral, each time he was too sick and they couldn’t afford medication.

Steve felt guilt churn in his stomach and he gripped Bucky’s hand on his arm and squeezed.

Bucky glanced down, and he took the flute that Steve hadn’t taken one drop of, handing it to a willing Okoye as she passed. “What is it, Doll?”

Steve withheld a shudder at _that_ and looked Bucky in the eye. “It’s just- this.” He gestured loosely to their surroundings, “Getting tipsy and dancin’ and laughing. It’s too good to be true, too simple, I can’t help but-”

“Stevie, listen to me,” Bucky whispers into the space between them, private and intimate and entirely theirs. He took Steve’s face in his hand, thumb tracing his cheekbone and brushing fluttering lashes as his eyes slip shut. “We’re safe, I’m safe, and the purple asshole is dead and gone. Gamora made sure. You don’t need to do this to yourself, please.”

Steve nodded, absorbing Bucky’s words and leaned into the fingers caressing his cheek until his pulse no longer thumped in his ears. Natasha sent him a smile, finally satisfied it seemed, and turned her full attention back to Wanda and Quill.

“Good?” Bucky posed after a minute, or maybe more than that, given the fact that artificial light now replaced the sun hidden by strips of red and purple on the horizon. Bucky lowered his hand and Steve took it in his own, bringing it to his lips. He pressed kisses to each knuckle painted silver and gold and surprisingly warm.

“Good,” Steve confirmed, his smile this time small and genuine. “Thank you.”

Bucky’s lips quirked up, teeth poking through and biting into the flesh of his bottom lip. “S’alright.”

Steve reached forward, despite himself, to take Bucky’s hand back again. He just had to make sure he was still here, alive and breathing and the happiest he’s ever seen him. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling of skin turning to ash in his grip.

Bucky pulls him closer and Steve goes with ease, as he always had and always would, undying fidelity.

Steve buried his face in Bucky’s neck despite the head’s worth of difference in their height, a practice they’d participated in a thousand and one times before.

Bucky’s fingers scratched at his scalp, sifting through hair still stuck together in blood and dirt and everything in-between.

Lips traced his ear, “Do you want a break from - all of this? Head outside a sec?”

“Yeah,” Steve confessed, pulling back to follow the other man out of the crowded room and to the serenity of Wakanda.

The evening air was cool on his skin, the last efforts of the sun coating he and Bucky in warmth like a blanket. They made their way through the streets until they came to the edge of the tree line, the remnants of the village that Bucky had made his home for the last few years.

Bucky pulls him down to the ground beneath an ancient willow, hands on his hips. The other man sat back, Steve following.

Steve picked at a flower in front of them, one of many that dotted the grass that wasn’t torn up and beat. He turned it over in his palm, perfectly beautiful and intact in spite of what had occurred. It reminded him of the man beside him, all beauty and perseverance.

“I just can’t believe it’s over,” Steve voiced in the silence, slotting the stalk into Bucky’s hair. He flushed, lips spread in bashful glee.

“Me neither,” Bucky tucked hair that had escaped his bun behind his ear, and Steve reached out to correct the flower from falling, index lingering on his jaw. “Keep thinking I’m gonna start disappearing at any damn minute.”

“I’d just have to pull you back again, I’m not letting anything happen to you, either of us.” Steve smiled, and Bucky mirrored the expression. “I’ll die before anybody tries to take you away from me.”

“ _Stevie_ ,” Bucky hissed, “Don’t say shit like that to me.”

He continued, pressing his forehead to Steve’s temple. “We’re gonna be fine, we have to be, because it’s what we fought for. Before, and today. It’s what we deserve, y’know?”

“We do,” Steve agreed, watching the palette of colour mix together in the clouds above between the gaps of the branches. The faintest tease of night was upon them, silver dotted in dark blue in the distance.

Bucky pressed his lips to Steve’s temple in replacement of his forehead, journeying his face until he got to his lips and Steve was laughing into it.

Bucky wasted no time, apparently impatient after almost a century, tongue pressing into a willing mouth. Steve’s hand came to Bucky’s nape, pulling him impossibly closer, and Bucky sighed.

Assured fingers travel Steve’s back as he sucks Steve’s bottom lip into his mouth and _fuck_ if that doesn’t make Steve stop thinking altogether.

“Much as I’d like to continue this,” Bucky painted against his mouth, stealing another couple of kisses and grinning when Steve moaned despite himself, “I don’t fancy explainin’ why I got grass in my hair and we were missing for an hour to Wilson.”

“Fair point,” Steve smiled, joining their lips again. Bucky gave in immediately, climbing on Steve’s lap and seemingly forgetting what he’d just said. Steve pulled back, kissing his way down Bucky’s throat, getting nothing less than eager whimpers in response.

“Alright,” Steve snorted when Bucky let out a confused whine. “C’mon. You owe me a dance.”

The flower was a mess of flattened petals having fallen onto Steve’s shoulder.

“A- A dance?” Bucky frowned, “Are you serious?”

“Completely, like you said. Been waiting near enough a century for this.”

“Doll,” Bucky pouted, uncaring of how immature he looked. “That ain’t happening.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve’s head tipped to the side, hair falling from behind his hair to the front of his face as it did.

“You’re so beautiful,” Bucky blurted, and Steve flushed head-to-toe before he shook his head.

Steve stood, Bucky wrapping his legs around his waist as he did. “Tryna get in my pants, Punk?”

“Depends,” Bucky grinned, getting down and leaning against the tree trunk. “Is it working?”

“You know it is,” Steve retorted, holding out a hand, “C’mon.”

“There isn’t any music,” Bucky giggles, taking it anyway.

“So,” Steve airs, uncaring as they begin swaying together. It’s like they’re kids all over again, bare feet on dusty floorboards as they trip over each other, over and over. Bucky’s expression the same as now, all hollow cheeks and happy creases as he would have steadied Steve’s skinny frame again, before they would give into laughter in a pile of limbs.

“I remember, too,” Bucky whispers, bringing his free hand to Steve’s waist and watching as Steve’s face lit up, “Your ma must’ve told us a dozen times to watch the nails sticking outta the floor.”

“Yet we tripped every damn time,” Steve guffawed, feet uneven on the unstable Earth beneath, and Bucky giggled along with him.

“You reckon she knew?”

Steve bit into his smile as it fell to something small, “Told me she knew that I loved you. That I need to keep hold of you. Funny how she figured it out before we did, huh?”

“Mm,” Bucky hummed, thumb in the jut of his hipbone, “I reckon the whole world knew before us.”

“Probably,” Steve chuckled, bringing Bucky’s hands to his lips again. “We have all the time we need, though. Everything worked out how it’s supposed to.”

“It did,” Bucky echoed, lowering their hands and leaning up to kiss him. His foot caught on an exposed root, and their laughter could most likely be heard from the palace they’d escaped.

Lost in time, the media called them, and maybe they were. But as long as they had it on their side, they would be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> my twitter is @PAULROVlA, come say hello and cry over these sad men with me.


End file.
